Against Monopoly Government

2007-11-24

The government we have is not the government we want. We want something better. It is becoming recognized that the government we have is a disaster. But even the better one that many want will not work.

The government we have cannot keep its promises. The obligations threaten to bankrupt us, with social security and medicare amounts to be paid up running into tens of trillions in the next few decades. The cost of having the current government is staggering, including over 40 percent of our incomes in taxes, plus sales taxes, plus the taxes imposed on farmers, manufacturers and service industries built into what we buy taking another 12 percent. Take another 5 percent or more in the cost of compliance with regulations. Estimate what it costs us to be forced to do useless things and to be prevented from doing other beneficial things. Take some more for the lose we suffer from inflation. This is not working.

But the government we want will not work, either. It might begin as an institution that protects our rights and leaves us alone. But in time, the power it has will be used by it to grow more power. When a foreign power starts war with us or natural disasters strike, it will convince a majority that it needs more power, higher taxes, etc. In a century or two it ends up being as much of a burden and unworkable scheme as our current state.

Can Government Really Be Limited?

The notion of government is naïve. If an institution has power to enforce rules of social order, it needs to be limited. It must have limits placed on it so that individual rights are protected. The limits are supposedly imposed by laws. How can government be limited by laws, since it makes the laws? You might say that the constitution should require a super-majority or even unanimous consent to enact any law. But in making it impossible to pass a bad law you make passage of good laws impossible also. If laws cannot limit it, what can?

Furthermore, government is monopolistic to the core. If we hold that monopolies are evil in the economic sphere, why would it make sense to establish one in the political sphere? The reason monopolies are feared is that, if they are permitted or even encouraged, what they provide to us will cost more than if open competition were practiced. Under any monopoly, we shrink or eliminate free choice. What could be voluntary becomes forced.

"A government is an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographic area."

-- Ayn Rand, “The Virtue of Selfishness”

That's a description of a monopoly. It precludes competition. There is no built-in incentive to hold costs down and to provide what it does at the required quality level.

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force."

-- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"

The line between a “proper government” and an “improper government” is thin. It is easy to cross it. The government as policeman is likely to defend itself before it defends us. If we should take action to limit its power it is likely to resort to force against us.

"If physical force is to be barred from social relationships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective code of rules. This is the task of a government - of a proper government - its basic task, its only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government. A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control - i.e., under objectively defined laws."

-- Ayn Rand, "The Nature of Government." The Virtue of Selfishness.

Creating laws that are objective means all parties are bound by them, with no exceptions. But governments have proven their tendency to exempt themselves from their own laws, to create contradictory rules, to make rules that are hard to understand, to fail to make the rules known to everyone, and to apply the rules equally. And, as was said above, having a monopoly on the use of force will eventually go beyond jusftified retaliation, and this force will be initiated against anyone who opposes what the government is doing.

Government is an evil concept.

Roy A. Childs holds that limited government is a floating abstraction. I quote from his “ Open Letter to Ayn Rand ” :

“It is my contention that limited government is a floating abstraction which has never been concretized by anyone; that a limited government must either initiate force or cease being a government; that the very concept of limited government is an unsuccessful attempt to integrate two mutually contradictory elements: statism and voluntarism . Hence, if this can be shown, epistemological clarity and moral consistency demands the rejection of the institution of government totally, resulting in free market anarchism, or a purely voluntary society.

“Why is a limited government a floating abstraction? Because it must either initiate force or stop being a government. Let me present a brief proof of this.

“Although I do not agree with your definition of government and think that it is epistemologically mistaken (i.e., you are not identifying its fundamental, and hence essential, characteristics), I shall accept it for the purpose of this critique. One of the major characteristics of your conception of government is that it holds a monopoly on the use of retalitatory force in a given geographical area. Now, there are only two possible kinds of monopolies: a coercive monopoly, which initiates force to keep its monopoly, or a non-coercive monopoly, which is always open to competition. In an Objectivist society, the government is not open to competition, and hence is a coercive monopoly.

“The quickest way of showing why it must either initiate force or cease being a government is the following: Suppose that I were distraught with the service of a government in an Objectivist society. Suppose that I judged, being as rational as I possibly could, that I could secure the protection of my contracts and the retrieval of stolen goods at a cheaper price and with more efficiency. Suppose I either decide to set up an institution to attain these ends, or patronize one which a friend or a business colleague has established. Now, if he succeeds in setting up the agency, which provides all the services of the Objectivist government, and restricts his more effcient activities to the use of retaliation against aggressors, there are only two alternatives as far as the "government" is concerned: (a) It can use force or the threat of it against the new institution, in order to keep its monopoly status in the given territory, thus initiating the use of threat of physical force against one who has not himself initiated force . Obviously, then, if it should choose this alternative, it would have initiated force. Q.E.D. Or: (b) It can refrain from initiating force, and allow the new institution to carry on its activities without interference. If it did this, then the Objectivist ‘government' would become a truly marketplace institution, and not a ‘government' at all. There would be competing agencies of protection, defense and retaliation---in short, free market anarchism.

“If the former should occur, the result would be statism. It is important to remember in this context that statism exists whenever there is a government which initiates force. The degree of statism, once the government has done so, is all that is in question. Once the principle of the initiation of force has been accepted, we have granted the premise of statists of all breeds, and the rest, as you have said so eloquently, is just a matter of time.

“If the latter case should occur, we would no longer have a government, properly speaking. This is, again, called free market anarchism. Note that what is in question is not whether or not, in fact , any free market agency of protection, defense or retaliation is more efficient than the former ‘government.' The point is that whether it is more efficient or not can only be decided by individuals acting according to their rational self-interest and on the basis of their rational judgment. And if they do not initiate force in this pursuit, then they are within their rights. If the Objectivist government, for whatever reason , moves to threaten or physically prevent these individuals from pursuing their rational self-interest, it is, whether you like it or not, initiating the use of physical force against another peaceful, nonaggressive human being . To advocate such a thing is, as you have said, ‘to evict oneself automatically from the realm of rights, of morality, and of the intellect.' Surely, then, you cannot be guilty of such a thing.

“Now, if the new agency should in fact initiate the use of force, then the former ‘government'-turned-marketplace-agency would of course have the right to retaliate against those individuals who performed the act. But, likewise, so would the new institution be able to use retaliation against the former ‘government' if that should initiate force.”

Mr. Childs said it well.

I support the Libertarians, even though many of them favor a single government in a given geographic area. And I support political candidates for office who run on Libertarian principles. It may be the first step towards something better. It increases the chances that more people will think it all through and discover that the problem is not just the sorry state of our current government, but rather government itself.